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A Congressional commission concluded today that the relocation and internment of 120,000 Japanese-American citizens and resident aliens in World War II was a ''grave injustice.''

It said the move was motivated by ''racial prejudice, war hysteria and failure of political leadership,'' and not by military considerations.

''The record does not permit the conclusion that military necessity war- Excerpts from report, page A12. ranted the exclusion of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast,'' the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians said in a 467-page report released today.

The commission called the exclusion, relocation and detention programs ''unique in our history.'' It criticized Congress, the Supreme Court, the press and others for advocating or permitting the ''grave injustice'' to Japanese-Americans.

But it placed particular blame on President Roosevelt. Among the conclusions of the report, entitled ''Personal Justice Denied,'' the commission said Roosevelt delayed the release of Japanese-Americans from internment camps until after the 1944 Presidential elections for political reasons.

The report's findings were unanimously endorsed today by the nine commission members. Established by Congress in 1980, the commission spent $1.3 million conducting its study of the factors that led to the internment.

In 1948, Congress authorized some modest compensation for property losses suffered by some of the Japanese-Americans interned at the time, but did not look into whether the internment program was justified. The appropriation was made under the Japanese-American Claims Act and provided $132 million for about 23,000 property claims.

Congress instructed the commission to recommend ''appropriate'' action, which, according to members of the commission, may well include compensation for the Japanese-Americans and their heirs. While the report today did not recommend additional cash compensation, the panel said it would decide whether to endorse such compensation before its mandate expires in June. .

The report received a decidedly mixed reception. Ron Ikejiri, a Washington representative of the Japanese-American Citizens League, a San Francisco-based group that lobbied Congress to authorize the inquiry, said he was ''very pleased'' by the report's criticism of American political leaders and institutions of that era.

Others expressed indignation. John J. McCloy, a lawyer in New York who served as Assistant Secretary of War under Roosevelt, called the report ''a shocking outrage.''

''The reputations of many honorable men responsible for the nation's security during the war, many of whom are dead and cannot defend themselves, have been assailed,'' he said. ''The report's conclusions are well and good in hindsight, but none of us had that at the time.''

In its report, the commission maintains that in February 1942, 10 weeks after Japan's suprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the exclusion of Japanese-Americans from California ''without any careful or thorough review of the situation.'' Roosevelt and other senior Government officials remained silent, it said, when Navy Secretary Frank Knox, contrary to the facts, asserted that the Pearl Harbor attack had been aided by sabotage and espionage by ethnic Japanese in Hawaii.

''All of this was done despite the fact that not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage or fifth column activity was committed by an American citizen of Japanese ancestry or by a resident Japanese alien on the West Coast,'' the report said. Reports Were 'Ignored'

Indeed, the report said, senior Government officials ''ignored'' reports by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and members of naval intelligence who concluded that nothing beyond careful watching of suspicious people or individual reviews of loyalty was called for.

Regarding the situation in 1944, the report said Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson informed Roosevelt in May that exclusion of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast was no longer militarily justifiable. But many people on the West Coast, it said, opposed the return of the Japanese residents.

Roosevelt decided to lift the exclusion order at the first Cabinet meeting after his re-election for a fourth term, the report recounts. ''The inescapable conclusion is that the delay was motivated by political considerations,'' the reports says. The head of the commission is Joan Z. Bernstein, an attorney with Wald, Harkrader & Ross and a former general counsel for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Other commission members are Representative Dan Lungren, Republican of California; former Senator Edward W. Brooke of Massachussets: former Representative Robert F. Drinan of Massachusetts; Arthur S. Fleming, a former Secretary of Education; former Associate Justice Arthur J. Goldberg; the Rev. I.V. Gromoff; Judge William M. Marutani, and former Senator Hugh B. Mitchell of Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: WARTIME INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE WAS 'GRAVE INJUSTICE,' PANEL SAYS. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe